I like the Freedom Group almost as much as Lola likes okra. What Cerberus’ conglomerate did to Marlin—gutting staff and moving production inside Remington—shouldn’t happen to a dog. The resulting guns are dogs. And then there’s the fact that Cerberus bowed to pressure from the California teacher’s union after the Newtown spree killing and jettisoned Bushmaster, the brand of firearm Adam Lanza used to murder 26 people. Oh wait. Cerberus only said they were gonna ditch Bushmaster. They didn’t. Which pleases me (somewhat) but pisses off gun control advocates something chronic. Check out this broadside from left-leaning real estate maven John Rosenthal . . .
Many successful businesses benefit from vertical integration and supply chain management. By controlling markets and inputs of a product you can limit competition, keep costs low and profits high. But when it comes to the health industry, the idea of hospitals having an interest in deadly firearms and ammunition, a major source of injury and death, makes even the most hardened Wall Street executives feel uncomfortable.
Cerberus, the Freedom Group’s overlords, also owns Steward Health Care System. Geddit? The big bad company sells stuff that hurts people and then fixes them! As for hardened Wall Street executives feeling uncomfortable about that—or anything other then losing their bonus or spending time in Club Fed—well that’s just silly.
But there are people, Huffington Post readers especially, who just eat this you-know-what up. You can almost hear them calling out please sir, can I have some more! Of course you can! Lots!
As the owner of one of the largest networks of hospitals in the New England area, Cerberus, acting through Steward Health, is treating many gunshot victims. Nationally, 16.5 percentof all spinal cord injuries are caused by gunshot injuries. Patients who are shot four or less times spend a median of 2.5-3 days in the hospital. Patients with five or more wounds, or three or more anatomic regions, have a median length of stay of 8 days. This adds up to quite a hefty hospital bill.
According to USA Today and a study by Ted Miller for Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, medical care for fatal gunshot wounds cost an average of $28,700 per patient in 2010. When you add in non-fatal injuries, this price tag reaches an aggregate cost of $3.2 billion annually. In 2010, $1.4 billion of the total gunshot wound health costs were paid by taxpayers through Medicare and Medicaid programs. But society pays more for a gunshot wound than just health care costs. Miller’s study estimated that in 2010 the government and, ergo, the American people lost $5.4 billion dollars of tax revenue by gunshot victims missing work, $4.7 billion was paid in court costs, $180 million in mental health care costs for gunshot victims, $224 million in insurance claim processing, and $133 million spent in responding to shootings. However, the cost to the people and relying on government handouts seems to be of little concern to Cerberus. In 2007, the company purchased Chrysler. Shortly thereafter, Chrysler declared bankruptcy and received billions of dollars in bailout money.
You won’t hear me arguing about that last bit. But c’mon, this is the price of freedom people. Yes, I said it. You can’t have a country where citizens have a right to keep and bear arms without financial implications. Here’s the kicker: it’s a net positive!
As our Bruce Krafft has pointed out, firearms save money by protecting innocent life and sending bad guys to the great jailhouse in the sky. Bruce did the math (conservatively) and came up with a figure of $1,000,000,000,000 per year. For the zero-impaired that’s one trillion dollars. That’s the kind of money even a real estate tycoon can respect. Or not.
Meanwhile the killing and gun sales just keep mounting. While there was talk of selling Freedom Group after the Newtown, Conn. massacre, and embarrassing news stories linking Bushmaster and Steward Health, it appears now that it was only PR talk and that Cerberus and their “family” of gun companies will stay in the highly profitable and integrated “merchant of death” and “provider of health care” businesses. Profits before people seems to be the Cerberus Capital way.
Again, I’m not a huge fan of The Freedom Group. But Steve Feinberg’s firearms folks are engaged in a capitalist enterprise in a capitalist country producing perfectly legal products. It’s up to the market to decide whether or not those products have value, and how much value they have.
By singling TFG out for approbation Rosenthal is attempting to create “value” in the company’s political destruction, and the elimination of the civilian firearms business in general. God forbid we should ever see the day when politics interferes with the business of Americans exercising their natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to armed self-defense. Oh wait . . .
Corporate conglomerates make a fortune pushing guns on the American public, then simultaneously profit by treating gunshot victims?
And they call US the paranoid conspiracy theory nuts…
I was thinking the SAME thing! I won’t laugh at your conspiracies if you want laugh at mine…
A hefty hospital bill that will, of course, be paid in full by the typical gunshot victim’s generous insurance plan, right?
Hardly the typical US gunshot vic will not pay if any payment is made it will be from their “insurer” – Uncle Suger aka Baraka Hussein Obumer. Good bet the evil corporation isn’tmaking any money on shootin vic.
Yeah, that was sarcasm. I’m well aware that most of them are going to be on Medicaid, if they aren’t on “Mutual of Nothing At All HMO”.
So a huge chunk of money comes from Medicare and Medicaid. Then more money for court costs.
Some of these statements reek of bad guys shooting bad guys. I’m surprised they didn’t add in prison costs.
What they failed to research were the actual types of gun used in crimes. As you all know, only <400 rifles/shotguns are used to kill people. Meanwhile over 7000 handguns are used to kill people. Why is that fact so important, because Freedom Group only sells Rifles and Shotguns with the exception of PARA USA, which sells 1911 pistols which are fairly pricey and not used by criminals.
So ummm, essentially this story of owning a hospital and firearms company is a joke.
Whoa… Critical thinking in effect… I need to go do something really stupid to offset this. (Lays rake on ground and jumps on it)
A few years back (’70s) The Catholic Diocese of St. Louis discovered, to their embarrassment, that they owned a major interest in the only porn movie house in town, the Fine Arts. This is pre-VCR, for you youngsters, so you had to go out and consume your smut in public!
Point is, unless you go to a LOT of trouble, if you have money tied up in paper, you probably don’t know the half of what you own.
some day, i’d like to have so much money i can ignore half of it.
I would like to know why $28,700 is spent on health care for a dead person?
A fatal gunshot wound should be funeral expences right?
What do you think you get for $28k today? If the dear departed vic has a gold grill then the funeral pland jumps to a starting point with a $15000+ decorative box, a big wake with drinks/pot/coke/etc and free rounds for the “mourners”, You have the driveby “celebration” to put on, on the big day the white Caddy ride withmultiple flower cars, etc It doesn’t come cheap.
Nothing will prevent Rosenthal or Krafft from using one of Cerebus’ hospitals in the event that they are shot. So what’s their gripe?
Wow, i just tried to correct the huffington post, they filter all their messages before allowing them to be posted. So basically unless you’re a libtard, don’t bother correcting them.
I’ve had bad luck with them too. Any conservative comment that is fact-based, calm, and logical has a strong chance of never seeing the light of day. I have seen plenty of stupid and poorly-argued material that leans right, though. I guess they don’t have any problem letting that stuff through.
They allow comments?????????
As someone who works in the healthcare industry for a hospital system in a major metropolitan area, I can attest to anyone that we do not make a profit on the majority of the patients treated for gun shot wounds. Most of the patients in the area who suffer gun shot wounds come from the poorest areas of our city. As such, they have Medicaid coverage (Medicaid is for the poor, Medicare is for age 65+) if they have any coverage at all. Medicaid pays so little that we lose money on the majority of patients we treat, especially outpatients, which most gun shot victims are. If they do not have Medicaid or other coverage, they are considered Self Pay. On Self Pay patients, we usually end up writing off the charges to charity or bad debt. This means we get zero dollars for our treatment.
I realize that this anti doesn’t care about facts or know how finance works in a hospital system. This was about the continued and sustained demonization of gun owners, manufacturers and advocates.
Ah, don’t worry, they make it up on the next $50 Tylenol…
A hospital does not have to accept Medicaid/Medicare patients if they don’t accept Medicaid/Medicare payments.
They have to accept ANYONE who comes into the emergency room, regardless of whether it’s known they can’t pay or even if it’s strongly suspected (because this is the sixth time this person has done it) they are homeless, claiming chest pains, and are just trying to get a flop for the night.
Medicare patients constitute the largest population that shows up at the emergency room. Many doctors are dropping medicare and medicaid patients. In the great state of Massachusetts, which has the prototype for Obamacare, emergency room visits just about doubled because it takes 45 day to get an appointment.
“…Miller’s study estimated that in 2010 the government and, ergo, the American people lost $5.4 billion dollars of tax revenue by gunshot victims missing work…”
Aren’t a very healthy (pardon the pun) percentage of gun shot victims poor urban males, usually with some sort of gang or or other criminal connection? Then how is it they could possibly contribute that much tax revenue to any system?
Didn’t you know drug dealers paid state sales tax, and income tax?
The Freedom Group said that it was dumping Bushmaster (actually, its entire firearms business) and it didn’t. Magpul said that it was dumping Colorado and it didn’t. The pendulum swings both ways. Both companies are FOS.
So, if you are dead it still costs $28,700? Uh, for the autopsy?
John Rosenthal…who the hell is he and why would anyone care what he thinks ? Sure it’s in HuffPo, but it’s a puff piece. They’re really getting desperate…I love it !
So then these bigtime real estate guys, they buy the land, and then they build on it…using construction companies they own. They own the land *and* the construction company? I tell you, there oughta be a law.
And don’t get me started on car manufacturers. They sell cars, and then when the cars break, they own companies that fix them!
Scandalous!
You mean Bush did a bailout. Dont tell the anti-obama crowd…they only think there was one government bailout.
“deadly firearms and ammunition, a major source of injury and death”
Should’ve been written as “life saving firearms and ammunition, a major source for preventing injury and death” by criminals to law-abiding citizens.
“The resulting guns are dogs”
No comparison. False metaphor. Dogs are good (and usually more reliable than today’s Marlins). Don’t you own and like your dogs?
But no one’s coming for your guns.
Rosenthal is one of the biggest proponents of disarmament in the country. He HATES guns and gun owners. I have heard him in person, it is sickening. I have never heard anyone who is more condescending, sneering, and more hateful and disdainful of gun owners, and I live in MA, so that is saying something!
He claims to be a “skeet shooter” and owns a “duck gun” but supports any and all restrictions. He is the one who put up the billboard on I-90 in Boston. I heard him at a “forum” in Stow, MA, and he wants police inspection of homes, he wants rights denied based on the fake terror/no fly list, (he was incredulous that Congress didn’t go along with that idea). He thinks it being a felony if you leave your guns unlocked when you leave the house is great idea. And he is so delusional he thinks the rest of the country agrees with him.
Consider as you may that virtually every aspect of every person’s activities can be manipulated and controlled under the guise of ‘healthcare’.
Now that Nationalization of Healthcare has been implemented as LAW ( BTW via confiscatory taxation ) no quantum leap in intellect is required to know this massive tome of federal legislation ( that no-one actually read prior to its enactment ) will be used in every manner possible to further “Victimize” the Morally-Conscious, ‘Rights’-respecting, Peaceable, Law-abiding American Citizen. Most especially those who own ‘GUNS’.
Having stated this previously, the emphasis on the necessity for more ‘GUN CONTROL LAWS’ will inevitably become increasingly focused on the entirely unnecessary and preventable costs associated with ‘GUNS’ and treatment of GUNSHOT wounds —
and of course, how unfair it is that people ‘contributing’ to Nationalized Healthcare System who don’t even own ‘GUNS’ have to pay for the exorbitant, unnecessary, unfair and totally preventable costs.
Therefore Common Sense GUN CONTROL LAWS requiring Registration of all Firearms and their owners must be enacted on the Federal level as a means to offset this health crisis of epidemic proportions.
Since federal registration of all ‘GUNS’ and their owners will eventually prove itself to be ineffective at prohibiting the actual criminals — the ex-cons, gang-bangers, drug-dealers, turf warriors and illegal aliens — from continuing to shoot people…well, “Mr. and Mrs. America, you’ll just have to Turn them all in”.
Simple. Really.
Edit: Replace ‘GUN CONTROL LAWS’ with ‘GUN SAFETY LAWS’.
Gw
Are not most of the victims of shootings poor people? I doubt those hospital bills are being paid. Hardly the cash cow the left infers…
Sorry, but quoting statistics on the number of spinal chord injuries caused by gunshots, average cost of treating non-fatal gunshot injuries versus fatal gunshot injuries, etc., etc., is just so much blah, blah, blah. To attempt to respond is getting bogged down in a swamp of b.s. stats. If they don’t like the second amendment (I personally like all of the amendments), then work to change the constitution and stop trying to legislate your way around it. I don’t need a new study with more statistics to tell me people can be violent, I figured that out early in youth.
Rosenthal is a statist, commie turd.
The author inadvertently shows that guns are not he problem but poverty is by pointing out a link between the gun violence and medicare/medicaid costs. Nice
Oh dont forget the fact that Adam Lanza HAD a Bushmaster in the car but NOT in the school, Those shots were all fired from pistols according the information I saw.